by Kayla Perrin
Six months after the shoot-out that had claimed his partner’s life, Jesse was in Hawaii with the woman who had a direct nexus to both the killing and Jesse’s current situation.
Tell her!
She deserved to know the whole of it, but he couldn’t tell her now. She’d all but said as much. It was too much information, too much distressing and heartrending baggage to dump on someone’s shoulders. He’d had victims and witnesses crack under less. He also didn’t want to hurt Baden or cause her any more emotional pain. After spending a year and a half feeling guilty about the way she had left things with Sean, he saw no benefit in adding to her burden or replacing one with another equally heavy one.
There was, however, a burden he needed lifted. Despite the way she felt in his arms, the way she responded to him, he needed to know.
“You’re still in love with him.”
He didn’t—couldn’t—pose the question like one, but he needed to know the answer nonetheless.
Even though it was Baden who had walked away from the idea of marriage, it did not necessarily mean that her feelings for Sean had in any way diminished. As a matter of fact, if she’d been walking around harboring the guilt she said she felt, Sean’s death cut off forever any opportunity to make things right between them—even if that final conversation was simply an apology.
She sat, wrapped her arms around her knees and placed her head on top. She took so long in answering that Jesse had to close his eyes to ward off the pain of loving her and never having her.
“You have to understand, Jesse,” she finally said. “I spent the first three months out here throwing myself into work so I wouldn’t have to think about that question, about what I did or why. I was angry with him for putting me in a position where my only viable option was to just walk away. I was angry with myself for not expressing my doubts, my concerns, my fears to the man I was going to pledge my body and my life to.”
Baden pushed hair from her eyes and made a motion that could have been a shrug.
“He’ll always be a part of me, Jesse. Sean will always own a little piece of my heart where good memories live. When I heard that he’d died and how, I was sad and I was angry about the senseless killing. And I wanted you guys—cops and detectives—to make sure that the people who were responsible for his death got what they all deserved and got it the hard way.”
“They are,” Jesse said.
As if she didn’t even hear him, Baden continued. “But I wasn’t devastated. Do you know what I mean? I should have been devastated and that I wasn’t just ate at me.”
Baden blinked back tears.
“What kind of person does that make me?” she asked as she continued the tortured articulation of emotions Jesse had forced her to confront.
“I cried, and I wished I had my photo albums and scrapbooks or even the engagement photo that we took—something to remind me of him other than what I’d done to him.”
“You moved five thousand miles and didn’t take any pictures with you?”
She shook her head. “I had one suitcase and my purse. You have to understand, I was a mess. Emotional. Scared. Embarrassed by what I’d done. I dumped my cell phone in the trash and bought a throwaway one in the airport gift shop. Not my brightest moment, I must admit. But I severed all ties. I needed to focus solely on healing me,” she said. “When I finally got settled, Aunt Henrietta sent my stuff, just clothes, shoes and jewelry. I insisted she not send me anything that had to do with Sean. She told me I’d regret that. And, as usual, Henrietta knows best.”
Jesse smiled at that. But Baden had not yet completed the self-flagellation she thought she so richly deserved.
“I wasn’t crushed and inconsolable the way a wife would have been,” she said. “The way a cop’s wife should have been.”
She smiled then, and it was saddest thing Jesse had ever seen. The sadness in her eyes, the depth of her regret was a stark stamp across her face.
“That’s when I knew I’d finally healed,” she said. “In dying, Sean released me. So in answer to your question, I’m not in love with him. Maybe I never was, although we had a mutual admiration going on. More than mutual admiration is needed to make a strong marriage, though. Did I love him? Yes. As a dear friend, as someone I wished I hadn’t hurt the way I did. The street thugs who killed him took away what I thought would always be time to make things right between us. That I regret.”
“Have you considered going home?”
“For a visit? Sure. For good?” She shook her head. “Hawaii has been too good to me.”
“How did you choose Hawaii?” Jesse asked.
For a moment, some of the sparkle seemed to leave her eyes. Jesse groaned inwardly, too late realizing the faux pas.
Before he could retract the question, she answered.
“Sean and I were going to come here. When I—” She paused, frowned as if searching for the right word to describe what had happened. Then, with a shrug, she continued. “When the wedding didn’t happen, I came anyway. Hawaii was good for me,” she said.
He loved the way she said the word Hawaii, adding an exotic V sound for the W and some sort of accent on the last I in the state’s name. He’d heard locals pronouncing it that way. Then realized with a start that she may have been born and raised in North Carolina, but for Baden, this exotic and enchanted chain of Pacific islands was now home.
“I like to think that I was born for Hawaii,” she said. “It just took me a while to make my way home.”
“I’m sorry about, well, about what happened. But I was glad, too,” he said.
He hadn’t planned to say that. It just came out, and now the words hung in the air, like a rain cloud that promised but had yet to produce fat raindrops.
Baden relaxed a little, sitting cross-legged with her hands in her lap. “Which part are you sorry about? That he would have stood me up at our wedding if I didn’t do it first? That he had a secret he couldn’t tell the woman he professed to love? Or that, in the end, he took the coward’s way out and got himself killed on purpose?”
Anger, instant and hot bubbled up. But the anger could not truthfully be directed at Baden. He was angry that Sean had treated this one-of-a-kind woman so badly, and he was just downright pissed that she’d come to the same conclusion he had about Sean’s death.
“It was ruled...”
She cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. I know all about the internal affairs or whatever you all call it, that inquiry into the shooting. I may not be anywhere near North Carolina, but getting information is all too easy. It’s called Google.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Baden sighed. Then turning to him, she gave a small smile. “I’m sorry, Jesse. I didn’t mean to snap at you. You’re not responsible for what Sean did or didn’t do. I just wish...”
“That he’d been straight-up with you?”
She nodded. “You know, I think some part of me knew.”
“That he was transsexual?”
She shook her head, her brows furrowed as if working through a complex scientific equation. “No, not trans, but that something was going on with him. For a minute, I thought he might be gay.”
“I did, too.”
A ghost of a smile parted her mouth. Jesse wanted to lean in and kiss her. Fighting the urge took more willpower than he thought he possessed.
“But that wasn’t it,” she said. “It really would have been so much easier if he’d just been gay.”
Jesse, who had gone through these same mental machinations in the weeks and months following Sean’s death, knew that she struggled to make sense of it all.
“I thought he loved me,” Baden said, her eyes filling with tears. She swiped a hand at her eye as if forcing the emotional response away.
“He did,” Jesse said. And so do I.
“And,” Baden added, “I’m not hanging out here in Paradise because I’m afraid of or embarrassed by the past and what I did. This is home. Hawaii represents the still-growing islands of life. And they, it, this literal Paradise on earth and Eden reborn all wrapped up in one, brought me back to life. I’m here because...”
When she stopped, Jesse leaned forward.
“What?” he asked.
Baden shook her head. “It’s nothing.”
He wanted to press, to find out what was going on in her head. But she’d already told him so much. He was grateful for that. And grateful that she felt secure enough with him to open up.
“Hey, Jesse?”
When he glanced at her, his body responded the way a starved man looked at a porterhouse steak.
“Yeah, Baden?”
“Have you ever seen the movie Waiting to Exhale?”
“The one where the woman burns up all of her husband’s stuff? Yeah, I saw it. Didn’t like it much.”
She laughed. “It wasn’t just about that scene,” she said. “And that’s not the scene I was just thinking of. You remember when Angela Bassett met Wesley Snipes in the bar, and they spent the night together in the bed, just holding each other?”
Jesse’s mouth went dry.
If she wanted him to do that, he would need to be fitted with a full body cast first.
Baden uncurled herself and rose to stand over him. Waiting for permission? Waiting to exhale?
Lord, give me strength to be the honorable man she thinks I am.
She held out a hand to him. “Will you spend the night holding me?”
He wanted to cry out that holding her was just the start of what he wanted to do with her. But he took her hand and guided her back onto the chaise where they stretched out together, Baden tucked under his arm as the lush Hawaiian night lulled them to sleep.
Chapter 8
When Jesse woke up several hours later, he was pretty sure that he’d been dreaming about holding Baden Calloway close to him. But when he opened his eyes, it wasn’t to see the resort-looking bedroom suite at his rental condo.
“This is what Eden must have looked like to Adam and Eve,” he said, finding himself alone for the moment.
Though he’d spent much of the night in a chaise longue instead of a bed, he felt remarkably refreshed.
With Baden.
A smile broadened across his face and he knew why he felt such a sense of contentment. He was in a beautiful place and had spent the night in the arms of a beautiful woman—not quite the way he’d for so long imagined spending the night with Baden Calloway, but the exquisite woman had been in his arms nonetheless.
He rose, stretched and turned toward the cottage.
His day improved exponentially, when he saw her walking toward him.
“Good morning,” he said.
* * *
Baden had had a few awkward morning-after moments in her time. She expected this one to beat them all. But she’d awakened in such a good mood, she couldn’t help but smile.
“Good morning to you,” she said.
Letting Jesse sleep, she had slipped away to put together breakfast. She carried a tray with coffee, fresh-cut pineapple, strawberries, grapes and some muffins she’d filched from Mama Melia.
“Let me help you with that,” Jesse offered.
He took the tray and carried it to a table set for two that he hadn’t even noticed.
“You didn’t have to do all this,” he said as they enjoyed their breakfast.
“That’s why I did it,” she said, casting a smile his way.
While she was grateful and touched that he’d been a gentleman last night, there was a lingering part of their conversation that remained unfinished.
Baden knew where she stood, but wasn’t at all sure that Jesse was being straight-up about how and what he felt.
He could have mailed that photo to her. But he had traveled almost five thousand miles to deliver something that the post office could have done with just one stamp.
Why?
“We need to talk,” she said.
Jesse finished off a muffin then answered. “We’ve been doing that for a while now, Baden.”
“This isn’t about Sean, Jesse,” she said. “This is about you and me. Why did you come here? You could have taken a vacation anywhere in the world. This planet we call Earth is a big place. If you wanted tropical, you could have gone to the Caribbean. That’s way closer and far more practical from North Carolina and the East Coast than coming all the way out here.”
“Baden, I came because...”
With her head cocked, she waited for his answer. She may have looked aggressive, but on the inside she felt like a fruit-filled Jell-O mold that had not yet set, wobbly and whooshy and on the verge of collapse.
Jesse closed his eyes for a moment, then met her gaze, head-on, direct and unflinching.
“I came here for a Hawaiian vacation.”
He held her gaze for a moment, accenting the words with the look that must have sent many a suspect on the road to confession. It didn’t work on Baden, though.
She stared him down, giving as she got and not at all falling sway to cop intimidation.
He lowered his gaze for a moment. And then met hers directly.
“I told you already, Baden. And I meant it. I came to Hawaii because I knew you were here. I think I’ve loved you since the first day we met. You were standing in the driveway of that house, wearing a fierce blue suit, some incredibly high-heeled shoes with ribbons at the ankles and, boy, were you pissed.”
He grinned, while speaking of the day.
She remembered it, as well. “I called the police when I went to open the house for a client who was coming by and instead found a window broken and the place ransacked. RPD took its sweet time sending someone over.”
“Ransacked? There was a lamp overturned and a rug askew. In dispatch’s defense, Baden, they weren’t going to make a fuss when all you reported was a busted window. But there you were, standing in that long driveway taking out all that mad on the two of us,” Jesse said.
“I wasn’t just mad,” Baden said. “I was scared. That was a million-dollar listing and, not only was it suddenly a major crime scene, I didn’t have another property to show that client.”
They both fell silent, remembering how that day and her initial call to the police had ended. It wasn’t just a broken window at the home for sale. Jesse and Sean, with Baden right on their heels trying to get them to hurry it up, had discovered a body in the backyard pool.
“The case is still open, unsolved,” Jesse said. “We never had enough evidence to make a bust.”
“I know,” she said. “Sean told me.”
“That day, I fell hard for you,” Jesse said.
She lifted an eyebrow at him displaying her skepticism. “You didn’t act like it. And you didn’t say anything.”
“That’s something I’ve regretted for a long time,” he said quietly. “Sean asked you out first. And after he got dibs, I wasn’t gonna break a man law and go after you, as well.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Dibs? I am not an object....”
“Hold on, Gloria Steinem. I didn’t mean it that way. Just that he, well, he got to you first and...”
Baden held up a hand. “You are already a foot deep, so stop with the explanation, okay?”
She wasn’t about to admit it to him, but Jesse was right.
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Baden knew and loved Sean, the man who was her lover, knight-errant and protector. There had been not one ounce of femininity in him. It was the testosterone that she’d been attracted to, even while the distant and quiet cool of Jesse Fremont intrigued her. But Sean had asked her out first.
He smiled and nodded.
“Getting back to your original question. This little mandatory vacation wasn’t exactly my idea. But when they said six weeks, I figured it was time to see what drew you to Hawaii and why you never came back home.”
“I didn’t have anything to return to,” Baden said, her voice barely audible. “There was no need to subject myself to whispering and finger-pointing about ‘there’s that poor Calloway girl who left her groom at the altar and then her hometown, all without explanation.’ It was humiliating enough the first go-around. I didn’t need or want the reminders. Besides,” she added, “when I got here, I knew I was at home. Hawaii has healed my soul, Jesse. It’s hard to explain.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not hard. I feel it, too. The lushness and vitality of this place is rejuvenating. Hawaii has a good vibe.”
Taking her hand in his, he raised it and pressed a kiss on the tender skin right below her wrist. “You’re like a flower blooming.”
She liked the image. But she liked what he was doing with his fingers even more. Ripples of want cascaded through her. She fought the urge to surrender to desire. She’d done that before and look where that had led.
“Are you afraid of breaking some sort of man law?”
Impertinent as it was, Jesse had to smile. “I don’t give a rip about man laws,” he said. “Just the ones in the North Carolina criminal codes.”
* * *
Even though Jesse had said the words, he knew them to be a lie. She was then and remained now Sean’s girl. He had to respect the lines that had been drawn. It was a matter of honor.
“Sean is gone,” Baden said. “We’re both still here.”
He wanted to believe he knew what she was saying. But his heart was beating too fast and loud for him to be sure. And his body was responding to the undercurrents of desire that flowed between them.
